Their father was the new overseer at the Archer ranch, and as yet they had not learned one word of English.
They were brightly dressed, dark-skinned little creatures, and each time that the new teacher spoke to them, their reply was the same, “Muchas gracias, Senorita,” which sounded very polite, but how was Josephine Bayley to teach them reading and spelling if neither knew the language of the other?
Two of the remaining pupils were equally hopeless, being the most forlorn little mites, children of a trapper who lived somewhere over toward Lake Tahoe, but, as Miss Bayley was to find, these pupils only came now and then, when their trapper-father could spare time to bring them, one in front and one back of him, on his horse.
Maggie and Millie Mullet were twins, aged six years, and Miss Bayley found as the weeks went by that although, after an hour of earnest effort, she might teach them to spell such words as “cat,” “bat,” “rat,” “mat,” when questioned the next day their minds were as blank as though they had never heard the words.
The tenth pupil was a very large boy, sixteen years of age, who was the only son of the burly blacksmith over at Woodford’s. He studied diligently, and when he once learned a thing he seemed never to forget it, and so of him Miss Bayley had a little more hope. However, his father, the powerful Ira Jenkins, Senior, thought “larnin’” unnecessary, but the mother, having learned to read, pored over novels, even when preparing meals, and she had decided that her overgrown son should be a preacher like the one who came once a month from Genoa and held “meetin’s” in the parlor at the inn.
As Miss Josephine Bayley looked over her little class that first morning, she felt desperately at a loss to know how to begin. Each child, it seemed, was studying something different from all the others, and, to add to her discomfort, the new teacher realized that the eyes of Jessica Archer, which were like her father’s, were watching her every move as though she had been admonished by her elders to observe and report all that happened.
The one bright spot was the corner where the wide-awake, intelligent young Martins sat, and Josephine Bayley found herself actually glad that they were “blue-blooded.”
Just as the new teacher was becoming almost panicky at the newness of everything, the slim, freckled hand of Dixie Martin appeared on high, and when Miss Bayley nodded, that small maiden arose, and, going to the desk on the platform, she said softly, “Please, teacher, we usually begin with singing. We all know the ‘Good-Morning’ song. I’ll lead if you want me to; I often do.”
“Oh, I’d be ever so grateful if you would.”
And so Dixie turned around and began to sing, in a clear, bird-like voice, a simple little melody that the older pupils knew and sang with her. There were four stanzas, and when the song was finished, the hand of Jessica Archer went up, and, rising, she said that as she was the smartest pupil in the school, she was always asked to read first.